Throughout the season, the CBS Sports MLB experts will bring you a weekly Batting Around roundtable breaking down pretty much anything. The latest news, a historical question, thoughts about the future of baseball, all sorts of stuff. Last week we debated whether MLB should adopt the swing-off tiebreaker for regular season games. This week we’re going to tackle the timing of the trade deadline.
Should MLB move the trade deadline later?
R.J. Anderson: No. I understand the intent — to give teams more time to separate themselves, leading to more sellers and more deadline activity — but I have a few objections. No. 1, I’m not sure that it would actually help clear out the logjam; if anything, I could see front offices reasoning that it’s easier to fluke your way into the playoffs with a good 45-game stretch than what we have today. No. 2, and relatedly, it would disrupt the calculus for trade value and shift front office behavior in a way that, I think, would be less entertaining.
Matt Snyder: Yes, I’d let them go back to Aug. 15. The whole point of throwing a trade deadline in the season is to spur activity. With so many teams on the cusp of contention, we have far more teams looking to buy than sell. Giving another few weeks to let things settle would do the trick. Obviously, cutting the number of playoff teams would be more preferable, but we aren’t getting that toothpaste back in the tube. As such, just push it back a few weeks and it would all work out just fine.
Dayn Perry: I don’t have strong feelings about this. I’m not sure tacking on a couple of weeks will lead to any additional clarity for those on the border between buying and selling. The issue is 12 postseason spots, and that’s not going away. I do like having one trade deadline as opposed to an August waiver period in addition to the July 31 cutoff. I guess I default toward leaving it how it is and recognizing that teams are going to have make difficult decisions with three wild cards available in each league no matter what the date on the calendar is.
Mike Axisa: Nah. It’s fine where it is. Making difficult decisions in July is not too much to ask of front offices. Last year, 15 teams were within four games of a postseason spot on July 31. Know how many teams were within four games of a postseason spot on Aug. 15? 18. I pulled Aug. 15 out of the air and maybe another date would prove a different story, but the point is there will always be lots of teams on the buy/sell fence with the third wild card. I’m not convinced pushing the deadline back will change things all that much.
One thing I will suggest is moving the All-Star Game up a week. It has been the second or third week of July since 2021. It used to be the first full week. The trade market doesn’t really heat up until after the draft, which now takes place during the All-Star break. Move the All-Star Game back to the first week of July and that will give teams another week to focus on the deadline.
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